1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for the treatment of oil spills using kenaf core and fiber. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improved method and apparatus for the treatment of oil spills, in both marine and earthen environments using kenaf that has been refined into fiber and core portions. Even more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for absorbing oil pollution in both aquatic and dry earthen environments, including the absorption of oil on dry surfaces and the separating of oil and water as in the case of marine spills, and wastewater streams, using the inner core of kenaf that has been separated from the outer fiber and pulverized into selected particle sizes.
2. General Background
Presently, a great deal of separated bast fiber is being imported into the United States as a raw material to make carpet padding and reinforcing mats for molded products. In the past a great deal of fiber was imported to make rope, twine, and burlap sacks. Most if not all of the fiber that is imported into the United States is separated by hand in third world countries where labor is extremely cheap. In these countries, the fiber is hand stripped from the stalk and made into bales for shipment. Usually, the inner core material is burnt as a waste causing ecological problems.
When the processed fiber arrives in this country, the bales are passed through a guillotine machine where the long fiber is cut up to a desired length before it goes into cleaning and manufacturing process. With the extensive Research and Development done in the past years by the USDA and private industry, fiber crops such as Kenaf and Cotalaria are being grown successfully in the Southern areas of the United States.
This crop is no being harvested by a newly developed system that lays the cut whole stalks in an orderly windrow cross ways to the planted row. The windrows are left in the field for a reasonable time to facilitate field drying by the sun. After field drying, the dried fibrous stalks are hauled to a staging area where it is stored until the next processing step. This next step was the passing of the whole stalk material through a shredder that shreds the wholestalk into a mixture of core and bast fiber. The fiber is short and well mixed with the core.
This presently used processing method makes good material for the present system of making paper but the fiber is unsatisfactory for other processes that require uniformity in length and good separation.
Non uniform length of bast fibers and core mixed with the fibers is a problem that would prevents U.S. grown kenaf and other like fibers from becoming an accepted fiber for many end users in this country. Many other methods have been tried unsuccessfully to eliminate this problem.
Most manufacturers that use imported fiber receive their imported fiber in bales. The fiber is hand stripped from the cut wholestalks and is four to six feet in length. When the fiber is put into the process it is first put through a guillotine process that cuts the fiber bales into short (for example eight inch) lengths. The cut pieces are then threshed and cleaned. A majority of the fibers retain the cut length.
Field dried wholestalks have been passed through a shredder which is set to give maximum length and to breakup as much core as possible. This incoming wholestalk product is continuously cut in eight inch lengths in the threshing process. This procedure gives a better fiber but not enough uniformity to be accepted by the final user in many cases.
The next trials were of kenaf stalks cut into pieces of lengths from five to ten inches. These were hand separated and measured for consistency. The length was almost one hundred percent consistent and the core was in a good size with very little small pieces of core to get entangled in the bast fiber.
When separated into core and fiber portions, kenaf can be sized and graded so that the fiber length is known and the core is of a particle size that is known. The core can be placed in a boom or in bales for use in control and pickup of oil spills in a marine or other aquatic environment. The bales can also be used to absorb oil in a dry environment such as spills on shop floors and the like. The kenaf core can be pulverized and graded into particulate sizes that are selected for use in the filtration of oil and water when the selected particulate kenaf core is placed in a separation vessel or chamber or cylinder or the like.
Particulate kenaf can be used in the pickup of floating oil such as in a spill or wastewater environment, because the core particles float. This places the kenaf core in contact with the floating oil when the kenaf core is dumped onto floating oil.
Particulate kenaf can be used in the pickup of oil spilled on a dry surface. In such a cleanup method, the particulate kenaf core of selected particle size is dumped onto the spill and the core absorbs oil as the particles mix with the oil. This ability to absorb also allows use of kenaf in sludge solidification.